Am very proud of all Afghani’s who have voted today, especially the women.

In the category of women and music, an historic event happened today at The Met:

“Last-minute cast changes at an opera house are always full of drama, but the one planned for Saturday afternoon’s performance of Puccini’s “La Bohème” at the Metropolitan Opera promised to go down in the annals of day-of-the-performance substitutions.

The rising soprano Kristine Opolais, who sang the title role of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” for the first time at the Met on Friday night, was awakened before 8 a.m. Saturday with a phone call from the Met: Could she sing the role of Mimi that afternoon in the matinee of “La Bohème,” to replace Anita Hartig, who was ailing?

The stakes are always high at the Met, with its 3,800 seats, but this last-minute switch would have a much wider audience. The performance, broadcast on the radio and transmitted live to movie theaters around the world as part of the Met’s “Live in HD” series, was expected to reach more than 300,000 people. But Ms. Opolais, whose performance in “Butterfly” ended just before 11 p.m. Friday, agreed to sing the new role at 1 p.m. Saturday.”

Oh my, Opalais and Villazon together were phenomenal. There is no one who can bring you to tears like Giacoma Puccino. It’s as if he knows your soul and just lifts it up in a perfect soaring of melody. I’m sorry I missed this performance at our nearby theater. Thank you, Bob.

Maybe the Afghan people should monitor our elections and make sure there is no “cheating” since the American people can’t be trusted or maybe we should stick all five fingers in purple ink that even if washed off can still be detected under a special lite.

Sr. Joan Chittister OSB is a Benedictine nun and prolific author on spiritual matters. She is very liberal in her outlook and strong on social justice. If not for the protection of her order the Vatican would have got rid of her long ago. Somebody I know went on retreat with her, and she said to my friend, “Pray for me, the posse is after me.”

Americans have no excuse for not voting. That is what these sorry Republicans are counting on, and we have seen what they have done or haven’t for this country, but yet we will sit home and allow them to get more control. No unemployment benefits, no minimum wage, no jobs bill, voting to repeal the ACA , but putting forth no health care bill themselves. Doing everything they can to prevent certain people from voting. But we want to sit home and Republicans and the Koch brothers take control of everything.

One more thing, these same people who are telling us that the Republicans is favor to take the Senate back, is the same ones who was telling us that the Republican Party was done after they shut down the Government. It seem they were wrong then, and they can be wrong now,.

HE IS AN SELF PROCLAIMED OBOT! He was on my jazz cruise in the fall, was pushing ACA and support for PBO every time he was on stage; called out the folks that were obstructing. During a Q&A a rwnj said words to the effect that he just lost a fan — MMcD reply with words to the effect that if speaking truth to power cost him fans then so be it.

Never really cared one way or another about MMcD; however, he won me over when he said “I’m an Obot!”

Some of the democrats running for Senate or running for re-election this year from red states are making huge mistakes distancing themselves from President Obama. I understand that PBO approval ratings in some of these red states are abysmal, but the president is still very popular, and have plenty of supporters in those states that voted for him in 2008 and 2012, especially young people and minorities. This president is still widely popular among democrats and some independents. It saddens me when I see these senate democratic candidates like Kay Hagen, Mark Begich, Udall, Alison Grimes and others fall victims to these ridiculous ideas perpetrated by the media and the republicans that the only way they can win their races is by rejecting or distancing themselves from the president and his policies. Where is the logic in that?

President Obama is very popular among democrats. The media and the GOP knows this, but these democratic candidates are too blind to see what should be very plain to them. These senate candidates need the youth vote, the minority vote, and the women vote to win in November. And who better in the democratic party than the twice elected President of the United States Barack Obama to help them achieve their goals of winning in November? He can campaign statewide for them, and can help motivate and energize young people to the poll on election day. They don’t understand that their biggest weapon in the 2014 midterm election is Barack and Michelle Obama. I hope all the democratic candidates in red states don’t fall prey to the same mistakes that have resulted in defeats for democrats in past elections. I hope they are smart enough to utilize the President and the first lady, and most importantly, I hope they embrace Obamacare, and highlights the program successes.

tnmtngirl, I’m really hoping they wake up before it’s too late. I know states like Kentucky, Alaska, and North Carolina were states that PBO lost in 2012, but he still had voters from that state. For example, even though he lost NC to Romney, there were still over 2 million people that voted for him in 2012 in that state.

Never saw a sane reason why it would not – how can anyone think opposing people seeing a doctor when they are ill could be a winning proposition. Guess there is a massive need for real education in the red US states.

Link in the tweet is Ukrainian version. Here is the link to the English version of the Ukrainian online portal (these folk really are impressive in their efforts to be transparent):http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/en

“Former director of television broadcasting company NTV Yevgeniy Kiseliov talks about Maidan, the presidential elections in Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s TV propaganda

by Dmitriy Volchek

The Russian state TV channels present the Ukrainian revolution as a criminal coup and the Maidan protesters as Nazis. They claim the new government is illegal and talk endlessly about the suffering of the Russian-speaking population, as if it’s languishing under a fifth column of ‘Banderites.’

One can figure out how this propaganda works from the recently published guidelines for journalists. These so-called ‘gag orders’ instruct the mass media to talk about the ‘rule of crime’ in Ukraine, ‘growing squabbles over power’ and the ‘criminality disguised as Maidan.’ And then the journalists are encouraged to promote vacations in Crimea.

Prominent Russian journalist and political analyst Yevgeniy Kiseliov, former director of the television broadcasting company NTV, former chief editor of Moskovskiye Novosti, and who currently works in Kyiv, compares the methods of the Russian television propagandists with the work of Josef Goebbels’s agents.”

VC, from all the reading I’ve been doing it appears that many Russians are aware of the scale of propaganda that is pushed at them 24/7 by their state controlled media. Moreover, the majority of them are already suffering from economic, cultural, and health deprivation as some of the items I’ve recently posted here indicate.

Putin’s ‘popularity’ is measured by ‘polls’ controlled by the same propagandists the do the radio and TV programming.

My sense is that if he’s stupid enough to invade Ukraine, the combination of the body bags coming home and the severity of the economic consequences will unleash millions of Russians to overthrow him. I assure you Ukrainians will fight a protracted war and the rest of the world, with few exceptions, will totally cut off Russia.

Even if he doesn’t invade, the costs being born by his fellow oligarchs + the increased hardship on the majority of the population will lead to his being removed from office, one way or another.

Ukraine, daily, is receiving more and more economic support and that translates into more economic pain for Russians – especially the petro-oligarchs – since deals are being put in place to supply Ukraine through other sources.

For all the reasons we know, if he starts a war, the outcome is unpredictable, but I envision NO scenario that leaves Russia as anything other than a wasteland.

Thanks, Bob, for this clear explanation. It’s amazing how much the “state” control of the media and the polls in Russia mirrors the Corporate control of the media and the polls in the US. I wonder if the corporate-owned media gets its daily gag orders and talking points in the same way the Russian media does. I would expect so from the uncanny similarity among the various US broadcasters. The paranoia among the right about “big government” control is a deliberate con on the part of the actual controllers and those Americans who watch and believe are the dupes.

Thank you for your detailed answer. I have been following the info you regularly share so I’m not as clueless on the Ukraine-Russia scenario as I would have been otherwise, but it occurred to me this morning to wonder if the citizens themselves in Russia had a clue. I confess, because I’m so used to getting reasonably accurate info (or know how to find it), I never even considered Putin’s ‘polls’ [being] controlled by the same propagandists that do the radio and TV programming’. I assumed he was marginally popular at home, and was thinking the people were willingly fighting against their own progress as rank and file repubs do. Thanks for all that you do to get info out!

Africa, as a Medicare user, the biggest things I have noticed since ObamaCare is the lack of fees for routine examinations, like mammograms, and the incredibly improved data bases. It used to be that one hand of the medical community did not know what the other was doing, but now all information is available to all health care professionals who see you so that they can coordinate their treatment of you. I don’t regard this as an intrusion on my privacy, I feel safer because of it since I won’t be getting unnecessary or contradictory treatment. And for some unfathomable reason, maybe related to the new sense of competition among providers, I have found people to be more considerate and more polite than they have been in the past.

Could it be they now spend more time on care & less time on arguing with health insurance companies? From my limited knowledge, the ACA has some clearly defined procedures as to what must be covered by health insurance & adding in the removal of pre-existing conditions, many of the old reasons to refuse payment are gone.

I agree with everything you said. Add to that, the fact that doctors no longer have to write prescriptions; they electronically send them to your pharmacy of choice. This has drastically cut down the time it takes to get your prescriptions.

My Aunt talks about how in the days she would work for the white folks and she made $7.00 a week. That’s $28.00 a week. I have a feeling the Koch Brothers and the Republicans want things to go back to those days.

AB, the Koch brothers are postules on the backside of the US. One of them is in his 80’s and the other in his 70’s. One or both has battled cancer. They are a living example of people who have outlived their time–especially if that time were 100 years ago. Neither of them represent the 1 percent. They represent the tiniest little fraction of the one percent with the kind of riches that great pharaohs or conquering kings used to have. They were born with platinum spoons in their mouths and have never known what it is to want or struggle. If they tried to live on minimum wages with no other support, they would very likely not survive one week. In that sense, every person who struggles and carries on at subsistence wages is better than they are.

Wow, and in many US states, state officials close polling places to put a great burden on those they don’t want to vote. As primitive as this Afghanistan method looks, it’s more enlightened than some of our voter suppressing state officials.